In 2004, Jean-Paul Nerrière coined the term Globish — a blend of global and English — to describe the English spoken around the world by non-native speakers. It is not broken English. It is functional English, shaped by its speakers' own languages, carrying traces of how they think, structure sentences, and use their bodies to communicate.

Here is why this matters for your British-LatAm interactions: when your LatAm counterpart speaks to you in English, they are most likely speaking Globish. And when you assume that shared language means shared understanding, you are working with roughly half the picture.

The word problem

Words make up only a portion of what you communicate. The remaining part is non-verbal — and it is in that part where Globish leaves its most consequential traces.

Pronunciation is the obvious one. Syntax is subtler: the way a speaker structures a sentence in Globish often mirrors the logic of their mother tongue, not English. So the emphasis lands in a different place, the qualification comes before the point instead of after it, and the sentence that sounds straightforward to its speaker lands as ambiguous or even contradictory to you.

Body language is subtler still. A LatAm professional operating in Globish is also operating in a conversational system — a Flow system — that reads silence, proximity, and gesture differently to the Slot defaults that tend to govern British professional settings. They may be signalling agreement, enthusiasm, or discomfort in ways that your system does not naturally register as such.

None of this is a communication failure. It is a calibration gap. And calibration gaps are entirely closable, once you know they exist.

What Slot and Flow™ have to do with it

The Slot System™ values precision, sequence, and clear delineation. When something is said, it is meant to be taken at face value. When a boundary is set, it holds. The structure does the relational work.

The Flow System™ values continuity, warmth, and responsiveness. Meaning is built through the exchange, not just carried in the words. Relationship is the structure.

A LatAm professional speaking Globish is translating not only across languages but across systems. They are putting Flow-shaped meaning into Slot-shaped words — and hoping the architecture survives the crossing. Often, enough of it does. But the parts that do not are rarely flagged, rarely visible, and regularly the source of the friction that neither side can quite name.

The practical implication

Fluency in Globish — your counterpart's ability to operate in English — does not reduce the need to read the room. If anything, it increases it, because the apparent smoothness of the exchange can mask the places where comprehension has quietly diverged.

The question is not whether your LatAm counterpart speaks English. The question is whether you are catching what they are actually saying — in their syntax, their pauses, their body language, their register — and whether they are catching yours.

That is not a language skill. It is a Slot v. Flow™ skill. And it is the one that decides whether the meeting that went well on the surface actually built something.